Question period and the healing power of humiliation

Tears, I tell my five-year-old daughter, are for serious things. Tears are for when you scrape your knee really badly, when someone you love falls ill, or when your pet fish dies.

Tears are not for stupid non-answers in the House of Commons, shed by a grown man who appeared to thoroughly enjoy delivering said non-answers just days before. Those are called crocodile tears — and it’s important to know the difference.

The spectacle of Parliamentary Secretary Paul Calandra blubbering away last Friday — as he finally apologized for answering questions on Canadian involvement in Iraq with an attack on the NDP’s position on Israel — hit a new nadir, even by House of Commons standards. “I let the passion and the anger of something I read get in the way of appropriately answering the question (of) the leader of the Opposition,” Calandra snuffled over the applause of all members, including those in his own party who had been cheering his inappropriate “answers”.

So Calandra’s verbiage wasn’t obfuscation. It was a word crime … of passion. Thank God he didn’t get really mad and go after Tom Mulcair with a hatchet instead of his tongue. All that was missing was a guest appearance by Oprah Winfrey, congratulating Calandra on the courage he showed in admitting his mistake. Or maybe a visit from Canada’s political apology specialist, Rob Ford, advising him to “move forward”.

There’s no guarantee that the shock of Calandra’s public humiliation will lead to a lasting climate of civility and substance. If the Conservatives really want to ensure that it does, they can’t depend on the goodwill of MPs or a strategy of the moment.

The follow-up to this brouhaha was an NDP motion, debated Monday, to give the House of Commons Speaker explicit powers to sanction an MP who “persists in irrelevance, or repetition, including during responses to oral questions”. The Speaker would be allowed to “direct the Member to discontinue his or her intervention, and if then the Member still continues to speak, the Speaker shall name the Member or, if in Committee of the Whole, the Chair shall report the Member to the House.” Pull a Calandra, in other words, and the Speaker could cut you off.

Thanks to this motion, an actual debate broke out in the House Monday. Defending the motion were the New Democrats, the Liberals and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who lamented that “we have bad high school theory masquerading as Parliament”.

Opposing it were the Conservatives. According to Government House Leader Peter Van Loan, the NDP’s motion would circumscribe answers to such an extent that “this place would grind to a halt.” In response, Liberal MP Scott Simms retorted that “it’s OK for members to think outside the box. But not outside the warehouse.”

The debate also hit some partisan notes: Van Loan accused the Opposition of failing to apologize for using public money to fund satellite offices outside the rules of Parliament. He quoted Maclean’s journalist Martin Patriquin, who observed that Mulcair deployed similar non-answers when he sat as an MNA in Quebec’s National Assembly. And he reminded the House that “the tone of question period is set by the questions … question period is a two-way street.”

Overall, however, it was the kind of measured exchange that has become far too rare in the House. Interestingly, it was followed by an equally respectful QP in which Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird gave forthright answers to questions on Canada’s participation in Iraq — and even promised to get some information to the Opposition when it became available. Later, International Trade Minister Ed Fast responded to questions about the $300,000 cost of flying CETA signatories back to Europe with a few partisan jabs — but also with a strong measure of substance in his defence of the government’s record on free trade.

Were the Tories trying to show that QP can work without passing the NDP’s motion? Perhaps. But there’s no guarantee that the shock of Calandra’s public humiliation will lead to a lasting climate of civility and substance. If the Conservatives really want to ensure that it does, they can’t depend on the goodwill of MPs or a strategy of the moment.

Instead of merely opposing the NDP’s motion, Conservatives should bring forward their own bill and give the Speaker the power to ensure that government MPs don’t duck, weave and weep when they cross the line.

Tasha Kheiriddin is a political writer and broadcaster who frequently comments in both English and French. In her student days, Tasha was active in youth politics in her hometown of Montreal, eventually serving as national policy director and then president of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation of Canada. After practising law and a stint in the government of Mike Harris, Tasha became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and co-wrote the 2005 bestseller, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. Tasha moved back to Montreal in 2006 and served as vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute, and later director for Quebec of the Fraser Institute, while also lecturing on conservative politics at McGill University. Tasha now lives in Whitby, Ontario with her daughter Zara, born in 2009.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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6 comments on “Question period and the healing power of humiliation”

Yes of course the opposition wants the government to answer questions. How about the very questions themselves? Often times they are mini speeches laced with lies, distortion and misrepresentation of the facts. So yes the government should answer straightforward questions not the stupid and sometimes silly non questions buried in mini speeches delivered by opposition members.

No, not blaming anybody. Simply wanting to make the playing field level. Some of the questions are not really questions at all. Mulcair was praised for his questioning of the PM on the Senate scandal. He asked short, specific questions. That is how all questions in the House should be asked. Short to the point without a lot of preamble.

Now here is the perfect example showing that MPs already possess the power, even without the Chong reform bill, apparently now modified till it is toothless, to stand up on their hind legs and vote against their own party for something that is needed to bring about a more effective Parliament.

Will Chong vote with the opposition to pass this bill? I would not be holding my breath …. Lol

If Ottawa journalists spend enough time reporting on the snivelling, blubbering Calandra they won’t have to report on stuff like the China free trade agreement or in depth looks at the causes and funding of ISL. Or anything else of serious import. There are a handful who do good work but most of them are lazy and drowning in trivia. Heaven help Canada, they won’t.

Author

Tasha Kheiriddin is a well-known political writer and broadcaster. After practising law and a stint in the government of Mike Harris, Tasha became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and co-wrote the 2005 bestseller, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. She now hosts a show on Toronto's Talk Radio AM640.